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This is a cross post from Moving Up the SAMR Model . Ms Ange in Grade 9 Integrated Math I, has taken the challenge of having student create individual blogfolios to reflect on their math learning. As all students in Grade 9 have already created a Google Site Digital Portfolio that is being used in English and Visual Arts, so the students were taught how to link their Math blogfolio directly from the ePortfolio site under "Mathemathics". In this way, all their learning reflections are connected to a central hub. The challenge in a blogfolio is to create appropriate "labels" that will allow retrieval of posts according to learning goals. The thoughtful creation and use of labels is a great support to reflection, which is a Modification stage on the SAMR model. In the figure below you will see stages in the use of blogs for learning in Math. Those stages are described in more detailed below with emphasis on "Modification", which is the example described on th...

In PE 10, Ms Arcenas' class is taking the learning outside of the classroom and also outside of the "Unit" by recording fitness workout every week along the entire school year. Students will reflect on their own fitness plan and also on how it should be adjusted to provide the desired results and support other activities like basketball or soccer practice. In order to make this record viable, students will enter the weekly workout on a Google Form that feeds a spreadsheet where they will collect all the information to be used as a basis for reflection and review. The images below show how the Form looks like on a cellphone, and how the filled out spreadsheet looks like. Such use of cellphones to enter fitness data is interpreted at the Augmentation stage of the SAMR model. This is because the cellphone offers clear advantages to paper record. It allows better organization and more importantly, it allows easy record on the spot, avoiding imprecise recording at a later time...

This is a cross post from ePortfolios Development Spirals . Today we had a great meeting with the Brazilian Studies Department where Geoff and Jennifer Carpenter shared their experience with ePortfolios. Their presentation can be seen at Digital Portfolio Workshop , where the Reflect page was particularly emphasized. Other teachers in the audience have already started publishing student work in different formats like showcase portfolio webpages, student product page in a class site or even class blogs. Middle School has in fact started a focus on Blogfolios and 5th Grade students are creating blog posts with labels based on Graded's Core Values.  So in order to provide some context for ePortfolio experiences already happening and possibilities for growth, I created and shared the following Infographic describing ePortfolio development spirals as seen from different perspectives. Silvia Tolisano and Jennifer Peterson, representing Middle and Elementary School Academic Technolo...

In Ceramics, a reflection journal practice that has been done on paper is now transferred to the online world. Ms Ariani asked her students to create individual blogs to host their journal reflections. The advantage of an online reflection journal is first of all to the students, as they will collect an easily accessible and shareable portfolio of their progress as artists. There is also the advantage of being able to easily illustrate their reflections with pictures of their final work and work in progress. Students can also add links to resources and research they may have done for the work, making such background information easily available not only for the reader but also for the student. The power of seeing one's own work nicely displayed and easily accessible cannot be underestimated. Apart from that, the fact that students can start to see each other's journals can be a powerful way to encourage more reflection and also positive critique. So we will be looking forward t...

 At the IB Year One Visual Arts class, students are getting oral feedback on their workbooks. This feedback used to do be done with post-its at the workbook itself, but they were easily lost, not much could be said, and workbooks were hard to carry around. Now students are scanning their workbooks and saving the images on  Voicethread  , which is a type of slideshow that allows oral, video or text feedback. The image at the left shows one page of the workbook inside Voicethread and Jennifer Carpenter's oral comment on the side, which can be accessed by clicking on her avatar. The students are embedding the Voicethread inside their own Digital Portfolio site, under "a Process and Reflection" page. The cool thing about an embedded Voicethread is that anyone is able to add comments right from the Google Site or Digital Portfolio!

 Last year we started exploring the idea of student digital portfolios. In English 9 students created their own Digital Portfolio Google site.They experimented embedding, linking and uploading different types of work, including Google Docs, Word Docs, scanned docs, screencasts. Visual Arts also joined in the experience including pictures of their work, reflections and art resources. This year started very busy with Grade 10 taking over the already created student portfolios and Grade 9 students started creating their own as well. Many conversations emerged about how this might look like in terms of checking progress. The English Dept  took the initiative to go for the organization of subjects under each grade level. At the image above you can see an example where the student organized the English work from last year under "Grade 9", creating new pages for "Grade 10". Visual Arts also continued using digital porfolios this year, and discussed how progress could be se...

The theme for teacher workshops this week was Formative Assessment with Technology  , which was based on an experience using Poll Everywhere in the IB Bio HL class. Amaral was looking for a technology tool to help with pre-assessment and I happened to be looking at Poll Everywhere for a while and also taking an ASB online course on formative assessment. We decided to go for Poll Everywhere, which has a free online version and seemed to provide the quick whole class feedback that was expected. The experience with Poll Everywhere went very well and I was happy to see that after the workshop, Caitlin decided to use it as a review tool with students on the next day. Her students really liked Poll Everywhere and asked for more.  Her feedback on its use was positive as she felt more able to target review to the class needs shown on the poll results. Just to give you a more detailed idea of how Poll Everwhere was used in Amaral's class, here is the account of the context for thi...

English 9 teachers, Geoff and Alissa, have been brave to start personal ePortfolio sites for their students! And so has been Jennifer C. for different Visual Arts classes. As we are together on the ePortfolio PLC, that has become a real trial of what it means to take the steps towards student portfolios. And there are many steps to that! The first step was to help students explore Google Sites templates and themes and make a choice of their own design. As they add personal touches to the site, it becomes their personal learning space/showcase reflecting their style as learners. The second step was getting specific pages created that serve their subjects well. Geoff and Alissa have the same pages for writing, reading, speaking, with product and process split up for those, and they are exploring slightly different structures for the writing process pages. Jennifer C. and I discussed web page structure at some length until a good option was found. Th...